Soundgarden were working on new album before Chris Cornell's death

Soundgarden had been working on new material with Chris Cornell in the run up to his suicide

Soundgarden were working on a new album before Chris Cornell tragically took his own life earlier this week.

The 52-year-old singer sadly hung himself inside his hotel room at the MGM Grand Hotel in Detroit, Michigan, on Wednesday (17.05.17) but the news has come as somewhat of a shock to his band mates as they had been happily penning new content in the run up to his sudden death.

Speaking just before his passing, guitarist Kim Thayil told Billboard: "It's been a couple years of intermittent songwriting sessions. We look for opportunities where all four of us are available and then we get together and we show each other what we've been working on, what we've been writing on our own and see if there's anything that can be contributed from that sharing process.

"And then we like to jam and see if any ideas come out collaboratively that we can work on. There's some songs that have been demoed. I think Matt [Cameron, drummer]'s demoed some things completely, stuff he's recorded on his computer. Chris [Cornell] has demoed a few things. He's written lyrics for ideas that I've written and that Ben [Shepherd, bassist] and Matt have written.

"There's some things that have been documented in rehearsal. There's some things that are at the demo stage. There's some that are still in the developmental stage -- ideas that we've jammed on that we're working on arrangements for. Every different stage within the process of songwriting is being addressed at this point."

But it wasn't just his band he was working with as Chris had also been writing some material with Nile Rodgers.

He told BANG Showbiz: "Our friendship was based on mutual respect of our musicianship, but we were actually friends. Sure I would go to his concerts but we used to spend a lot of time together hanging out together in restaurants, talking about the state of the world, clothing, music, what's your favourite movie. We were much more friends as regular people than we were musical colleagues."